Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographies with Nigerian television/film stage-set companies, smaller furniture-carpentry firms and location managers, the paper challenges several tenets associated with entrepreneurship, especially in relation to innovation and productive activity.

Paper long abstract:

The paper draws on ethnographic research carried out with leading Nigerian television/film stage-set companies, smaller carpentry firms producing furniture for domestic use and location management businesses. It challenges several tenets associated with entrepreneurship, especially in relation to innovation and productive activity.

First I analyse the sector comprising location management companies (which secure movie locations) and the house/hotel location owners in Igboland. I argue against the applicability of the territorial innovation system approach, which focuses on the "spatial organization of production" through the sourcing inputs. Instead, I propose that location management should be seen as part of an experience-economy scene. Such a scene involves the "spatial contextualization of consumption" through the artful composition of landscapes of sociable consumption, often for the purpose of attracting visitors.

Through the analysis of the TV/film set and home-carpentry firms, I put forward an alternative to the focus on novelty characteristic of the innovation and entrepreneurship literatures, instead drawing on the "cultural improvisation" and "aesthetic formation" approaches. These approaches emphasize the role of materials and mediums and how they interact with and embody communities through an accumulated trail of performances. In this vein, the dynamics of imitation are considered in the case of Nigerian home furnishings copied from imported interior design catalogues. In a second case, furnishings were created with the property of "filmability" (i.e. specifically for the purpose of filming), resulting in the emergence of a new Nigerian interior style.